It´s Alive #design101 / 039 Prototype

I took first pics on Thursday afternoon.

Here is my prototype for my Wonderland Wintergarden. I ll try to find time to make Alice, White Rabbit and Madhatter character into my final garden not just a paper cut but little modeled characters.
But as for now this prototype shows already my garden idea and as well the lantern as the frame and space for my project that I had not before in my tool photos (merely just as a concept of space). Its pretty much made already in 1:1 size so I noticed it will be quite tight to fit all elements into the lantern.

Would be so cool to paint the chinese teapot with my own style. It was very cheap teapot, maybe just 4 euro from chinese shop. I tested to paint to the bottom of the teapot with porcelain colors but those colours are not covering the old paint so it would not work. I tried as well for the 1st test to cover the blue "made in china" text with white acryl color but that would make the surface look like painted and it would not anymore look natural shiny porcelain. Also paints have lot of harmful things and toxic for plants so I had to give up this idea. But I did get inspiration to find in the future some white porcelain cups from flea market and I will try also paint my own cups then.

making the prototype was fun and it didin´t took much time..but its winter so it got early dark.

Next day on Finnish independence day 6.12 it was snowing beautiful big snow flakes and I took some more day pictures of my little prototype.

It´s Alive #design101/038 My tools for garden project

These series of tools I need for my Wonderland garden project became like a universe starting from seeds and carrot, getting into shapes in different materials from nature and then becoming forms of designs as chinese tea pot and cup and cup cake.

And you will see later if I could use all of them and how and what was too much to fit in the same universe of Wonderland.

Did I forgot something that I need in order to create life? Let´s imagine in this picture that the black paper is the ground as I didnt want to open yet the package of ground before I plant my seeds.

Itś Alive week! #design101 /036

How to grow imagination in a garden?

I made some plans for the week in my Alice in the Wonderland Agenda and got an idea about making a Wonderland garden.

I remember reading a Linnea book when I was child and got lot of ideas from it back then. She was making in it also a mini garden. I liked that she had name tags on all the plants to know what was what.

 I found this amazing web site called The Weegarden and here are some images from there:

I also found how to do a terrarium garden.


Actually when I came from the gym  I passed to see all kinds of lanterns on home stuff shop and was even considering for a moment to use a glass cake holder for my garden project. It was written Live in one of them. But looks like I am not the only one who got this idea to have plants in a cake holder. Check out Twig worlds!

Its Alive! #design101 / 037 Alice in the Wonderland

I had missed this peace of Alice in the Wonderland introduction video of Design101 in the beginning but luckily I noticed it now.



My garden will be called Wonderland Wintergarden.

here is my plan for the project

These will be my main boundaries in this weeks task.

# 1st design problem: safety of my garden against predators

I have some challenges actually with my cat that look a bit like the cheshire cat. He is danger to my garden project.  I need to make a garden that is protected. First I thought about making the garden in a bird cage. Now I am more convinced it will be a lantern with glass walls. Its also fun idea to try to make the lantern hang front of the window and maybe even have multiple lanterns where some I can light also some candles.


# 2nd design problem: budget

I will try to spend as less as possible. Things might not look so clean and sophisticated design with different kind of jogurt cups and cat food tins but lets see how I can solve this nicely.

#3rd design problem: function - what do I grow?

I will do something that I can eat so there will be a meaning to grow things.


Here is some pictures of Swedish style gardens I like a lot:

my dream house: things growing on the roof

just picture of plants making a garden on a trey

room as a garden

also Swedish had thought about the bird cage as a garden

My Diary #design101/019 15.11

here you can see the different methods I used to make paper.

Fridays project was all about different papers. I made my own papers on Saturday and that is a different story that needs own post. But here is just my Friday´s notebook project and the other notebooks together.

My Diary #design101/018 14.11

here is my mini notebook for just small ideas.

here you can see some binding techniques I used.

This is Friday´s project in binding process

My Diary #design101/017 golden ratio 13.11

Here is my #design101 notebook project 017 = 8,034(8)x13.

I made it according to golden ratio 1,618.

I learned on the way from others comments on Iversity platform that if I make the golden ratio just by folding the paper then I must make it not from the golden ratio size of a paper. So I calculated my paper size based on the golden ratio ending format 8x13 (4x8)x(2x13). My paper size was then 32x26.

then I just needed the cover for my notebook. I used paperbag

I realised I must cut my A3 poster to get the golden ratio ending size.

I used for this project as a paper A3 Loesje posters that I cut to the correct paper size and then folded into booklets with this instant book method. I gathered the separate little booklets into a notebook with a separate cover that closes with a pen. The idea of the notebook is that because its not binded notebook you can always add or remove pages based on your need.

I actually got idea because of this task to make a birthday gift for my dear friend who is active in Loesje. This gift was not made in Golden ratio because I wanted to give her a chance to use the A3 Loesje posters without cutting them. So I just made same kind of project to her without golden ratio. She has always a lot of those posters around and so she will always have new pages on her notebook. And if she want its still possible to stick some posters from her notebook to some wall on her way in the city. You can even give one poster out of your notebook easily.

2 different notebooks and pens

Something to remember:Design is relationships among parts.

“We do not imitate, but are a model to others,” said Pericles (the mastermind behind Athen’s Acropolis...).